Iran Today: 9-Year-Old “Cyber-criminal” Arrested and Other News

9-Year-Old “Cyber-criminal” Arrested

Bandar Abbas: December 12, 2018

Iranian Cyber Police in the province of Hormozgan have arrested a nine-year-old boy and charged him with “cybercrimes.” Colonel Ali Asghar Eftekhari, commander of the province’s Cyber Police announced that the boy had been identified and arrested after a complaint by a woman in the port city of Bandar Abbas. “By sending immoral material and asking for private pictures, he was trying to establish an inappropriate relationship with her,” Eftekhari said. In the jargon of the Islamic Republic, “private pictures” can mean anything from photographs of a woman not wearing hijab to nude pictures.

“The accused used his father’s identity online,” said the colonel. “In preliminary interrogations, the accused tried to deny his guilt with contradictory statements but when faced with evidence he confessed to his crime.”

Iranian laws do not specify an age for criminal responsibility, but they do declare the age of puberty to be over nine for girls and over 15 for boys, and judges do not sentence children below these ages.

Poverty Kills More Than 10,000 Newborns Every Year

Tehran: December 12, 2018

More than 10,000 newborns die in Iran every year as a result of poverty, Mohammad Heydari, the head of the health ministry’s Infant Health Department announced on December 12 [Persian link]. He said that the provinces of Sistan and Baluchistan, Hormozgan, Kermanshah and Kerman have the highest number of infant mortality due to “low awareness of hygiene, poverty and lack of proper care during pregnancy ... The major factor is underdeveloped embryos ... For every 1,000 births, 8.22 die because of poverty.”

A study published by the Iranian parliament’s Research Center identifies Sistan and Baluchistan and Kerman as the two poorest provinces in the country. According to this study, in 2016, 38.31 percent of the population of Sistan and Baluchistan, or around 1.232 million people, lived in absolute poverty. The neighboring province of Kerman was second worse off, where 32.90 percent of the population, or around 1.311 million people, live in absolute poverty.

Ayatollah Condemns Actresses Wearing Wigs Onstage

Qom: December 11, 2018

A religious authority in the city of Qom has condemned actresses who wear wigs on stage. “We were informed that in Tehran a play was performed where women acted on stage while wearing wigs,” said Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani [Persian link]. He added that he had warned the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance’s deputy minister about the matter “so that he would investigate the matter as soon as possible.”

The play the ayatollah was referring to is a stage production of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables. Photographs of the performance had been posted on social networks and prompted anger from some religious hardliners. Some time before, performances of Fando and Lis, a play by Fernando Arrabal, was suspended because some of the actresses were wearing wigs on stage without wearing hats on top of them. In the first few weeks of December, however, performances were resumed.

The Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei has been asked whether it is permissible for a man to look at a woman he is not related to while she is wearing a wig without a further head covering such as a hat on top of the wig. [Persian link]. His answer was: “It is problematic,” but he did not make it clear whether it was forbidden or not.